2012 NBA Championship Futures

Despite losing the NBA FInals to the Dallas Mavericks, the Miami Heat are still the favorites for next season’s NBA Championship while the Mavericks are a 10/1 longshot and fifth favorite team to win the title. It makes sense. In a lot of ways the 2011 season was a perfect set of events that allowed the Mavericks to win. They played great basketball, but they also won a lot of coin flip situations and had their fair share of luck. The Heat were just built to win and make the Finals which I think they will do again. The Mavericks? At their age and with all of the expiring contracts, they’ll need a lot of luck to get it done.

The Heat were so very close and I expect them to be right back in the thick of it next year. Lebron James somehow just keeps getting better and I could see this loss propelling him to another level next season. The Heat are a scary team and fully deserve to be the favorites heading into next season.

The Lakers come in as the second favorite at 11/2 and I’m not quite sure I understand this one. Phil Jackson is expected to retire and everyone is a year older. Sure they still have Kobe, but we’ve seen what happens to Kobe when Phil Jackson isn’t around and it’s not pretty. He may have grown and matured, but I’m taking a “I’ll believe it when I see it” approach to this one.

On the intriguing end of the spectrum, we have the Bulls at 6/1 and the Thunder at 8/1. These two young teams looked great in the playoffs, making it to their respective Conference Finals. I think one of them makes the leap to the following round next year. The Bulls, unfortunately, share a conference with the Heat so I’m going to have to go with the Thunder here. They just have so much young talent that can score at will and they should only continue to get better. The Thunder taking on the Heat would be an amazing match-up of the young talent that the NBA has to offer.

The Spurs were one basket away from beating the Mavericks last year and finished with the best record in the Western Conference, but still sit at just 20/1 this year. They beautiful game of basketball they play just can’t seem to get any respect from bookmakers. They’re old, but they are still one of the best teams in the NBA every year. Where’s the love?

Full, early NBA Championship Futures for the 2011-12 season from Bovada are below. You can bet any NBA Futures at http://www.Bovada.lv